Pampered Little Snake, Give Me a Kiss - Chapter 16

Chapter 16: I Want to Eat! Looking Down on Snakes??

The end result was that Qianqian didn’t get her wish after all.

The night deepened, and the lights went out. The dorm fell into a quiet hush, save for the snake, who was so annoyed she spent the night crawling up and down her stone hide. Relying on her excellent night vision, she made sure to swerve around those two quail eggs every single time.

She was truly suffering the consequences of not understanding human speech!

Wait, no…

Qianqian suddenly stopped moving, realizing her logic was flawed. What use would it be if she understood the human? Tonight’s mess was clearly because the human didn’t understand her meaning!

Sigh.

Qianqian’s spirit instantly deflated. She curled up on the half of the tank warmed by the heating pad, her vertical pupils glowing with a faint fluorescence in the dark. She gave the tip of her tail a dejected little twitch. If only the Little Junior could understand her…

In the dead of night, a sliver of the window curtain remained unclosed. As Qianqian fell asleep, a halo of faint light drifted around her snow-white scales, like a lunar corona around the moon. The color was pale, yet its presence was impossible to ignore. She, however, remained completely unaware.

Song Keling possessed a powerful scientific spirit, but when it came to Qianqian, that spirit was being systematically weakened. There were too many mysteries surrounding the little snake. She had tried to solve them at first, but failed. Now, she was subconsciously willing to cooperate with and maintain that mystery rather than probing for the truth.

She didn’t know what species Qianqian was; she just felt she was beautiful, cute, unique, and irreplaceable. If there were already a name for her species, if there were many others just like her in some corner of the world, and if internet encyclopedias could describe her traits with precise, cold numerical ranges…

While that would be scientific, rigorous, and safe, Song Keling felt a sudden surge of “loss,” as if everything would lose its emotional significance. Perhaps the meaning had changed the moment the “little friend” followed her back from Xuetai for no apparent reason.

That was why she had rejected Senior Su and refused to let anyone else care for her. And even though extracting venom directly would be more convenient for purification, she had hesitated and eventually gave up. After all, what was the point of isolating it? She couldn’t truly treat Qianqian as an experimental subject; it was a long process that would undoubtedly cause the snake countless injuries. Simple venom extraction wouldn’t just be a one-time thing. She didn’t want to see the snake in a state of panic and fear, forced to strike instinctively while her venom glands were squeezed.

So, in the end, Song Keling only kept one impure sample and disposed of the dead mouse.

After class at noon, Song Keling specifically went to the grassy woods on the north side of the school to look for little frogs. She got lucky and ran into a senior from the Agricultural College who was treating fruit trees for pests. He gave her a few fat green caterpillars and then introduced her to a senior sister from Aquaculture, who gave her a baby eel.

Now she didn’t have to run to the market. She would try everything.

For lunch, she got takeout again: a box of rice with three meat dishes and two vegetables. The first thing she did upon returning to the dorm was set down the meal, wash her hands, and come out to feed the snake.

The results were not optimistic. The frog? Qianqian twisted away from it. The caterpillars? She didn’t even give them a glance. The eel was tossed in and made a mess of the substrate paper, but Qianqian just retreated further and further back.

She refused to eat… The two quail eggs were still sitting perfectly intact on the stone hide. With the heating pad on that side, the temperature and humidity were perfect. If Qianqian kept refusing to eat, Song Keling wouldn’t be surprised if two little quails hatched in ten days or two weeks.

Watching her territory being occupied by foreign creatures, Qianqian was furious. But being naturally slow-tempered, she felt she was too intelligent and wise to bicker with them, so she stayed far away. Yet staying away only made her more annoyed. She flicked her thin black tongue, lodging ten thousand complaints against the human in front of her.

Seeing Qianqian coiled in the corner of the enclosure closest to her, flicking her tongue and clearly intending to fast, Song Keling felt troubled. “Qianqian, you have to eat a little of something. Look, your scales aren’t as pretty anymore. If you don’t eat, you’ll start looking thin in a couple of days.”

Qianqian immediately stopped flicking her tongue. She stared with wide, crimson pupils: Which snake are you calling not pretty?!

Song Keling’s heart skipped a beat. That eerie feeling from long ago—as if she could look through those animalistic pupils and see the snake’s emotions—had returned.

Song Keling leaned in closer. “You’re still very beautiful, but if you go without eating, you’ll soon become…” She couldn’t find the right word.

Before she could finish, Qianqian raised her body, winding and climbing up the enclosure bit by bit until her tiny head pressed against the underside of the lid. She didn’t retreat; instead, she pushed against it with a bit of force, flattening her horn scales.

Song Keling: Jailbreak? Right in front of me?!

Song Keling watched for two seconds, moved her lunch aside, put on gloves, and gave the enclosure a little shake. The little snake, clinging to the edge in an attempt to escape, was shaken by that “ruthless” iron hand and fell back onto the soft newspaper substrate.

Song Keling figured that since the inside was already a mess thanks to the eel, she would have to move Qianqian out anyway to change the paper. Since she wanted out now, she’d let her out early to see what she was actually up to.

The lid was opened.

Qianqian climbed back up and poked her small head over the rim. Her red eyes had golden slits for pupils, and her tiny horn scales moved as she turned her head. She looked left and right, seemingly confused as to where the thing pressing on her head had gone.

However, she clearly wasn’t the type to ask “why.” Using her powerful core strength, she lowered herself from the top. Seeing her little body wasn’t long enough, Song Keling assisted her with a snake hook, placing her on the desk.

Qianqian “landed” safely and flicked her tongue at the human as a sign of thanks, then focused intently on slithering forward. The desk was smooth, unlike the newspaper in her tank, so her progress was extremely slow. She would look up occasionally, then focus back on crawling.

Finally, she arrived in front of Song Keling’s stacked takeout boxes, which were still emitting steam and fragrance. She stopped and turned her head to flick her tongue at Song Keling.

—I want to eat this!

Song Keling: “……”

Song Keling felt she must be hallucinating. She used her gloved hand to pinch her thigh. The pain was immediate.

Her mind was clear. She watched the beautiful white snake stop right in front of her lunch, turn its little head, look over with crimson pupils, and flick its black tongue before going still.

What was going on? Why did she feel like Qianqian wanted to eat her lunch?!

Seeing no reaction from Song Keling, Qianqian decided to be self-reliant. she circled the lunchbox curiously, sizing it up. She didn’t know what it was, but it smelled so, so fragrant.

Seeing the snake’s subsequent behavior, Song Keling finally found a rational explanation—Qianqian had followed the heat. The weather had been chilly lately. Qianqian had been in a temperature-controlled tank; coming out onto the ice-cold desk, she would naturally gravitate toward a heat source. To balance the warmth, she circled a few times and eventually curled up with her head touching her tail, surrounding the lunchbox with her slender body.

Song Keling saw her go still after this, lifting her head slightly and leaning in to observe while flicking her tongue.

She still had to eat this lunch. To defend her meal, Song Keling used the snake hook to gently nudge Qianqian away. “Stop looking. You can’t eat this.”

Qianqian understood and immediately turned her neck to look at her defiantly: Why not? You can eat it but I can’t? Just because you’re a human and I’m a snake? Looking down on snakes??

Song Keling only monitored her movements out of the corner of her eye, so she didn’t notice the snake’s indignant sense of grievance. She moved quickly, catching the live creatures in the tank and putting them back in bags. Then she removed the water cup, moss, and hide to replace the substrate.

Since Qianqian was still small, the substrate was newspaper rather than aspen shavings, so she could see a few healthy-looking droppings. However, it had been nearly a week since her last meal before the release attempt. If Qianqian didn’t eat soon, her health would truly suffer.

Can snakes eat cooked food?

As she laid down the new paper, Song Keling couldn’t help but wonder, completely unaware that she was being bottomlessly over-indulgent. Once everything was ready, she used the hook to lift Qianqian back into the enclosure and closed the lid tight.

Then, she took off her gloves to wash her hands. Song Keling messaged her senior, Qiao Ying, on WeChat to ask if snakes could eat cooked food. There was no immediate reply; she was likely busy.

Song Keling sat back at the desk and opened her takeout. Just then, her phone vibrated. The reply came—”Adults can’t; their digestive systems are adapted to raw food. Cooked food might cause indigestion. A baby snake might be able to try a tiny bit, but don’t feed it much. Why are you asking?”

Song Keling was surprised that Senior Su Yili hadn’t told Qiao Ying about this, despite them being so close. But that was fine; one less thing to worry about.

Song Keling replied: “Just eating lunch and had a sudden thought.”

Qiao Ying: “Oh, okay. A baby snake can ^ ^. But compared to cooked food, a hatchling will definitely prefer a raw pinky mouse~~”

“Thanks, Senior.”

“No problem, Junior~”

Since she could eat it, Song Keling couldn’t resist trying. She opened her meal. Excluding the vegetables, her meat dishes were: stir-fried chicken with chili, a braised “lion’s head” meatball, and sweet and sour pork tenderloin. She ruled out the chicken and the meatball due to the heavy seasoning.

Song Keling picked up a piece of sweet and sour pork, carefully scraped off the thick sauce, and rinsed the meat twice in mineral water. Then, she broke off a small piece, picked it up with long tweezers, and reopened the enclosure lid.

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